Arkedo Studio Ending Future Development, Not Closing

Aurelien Regard, co-founder and creative director of French independent developer Arkedo Studio, announced on his blog today that the company no longer has any employees and will not be making any more games. But the studio is not closing.

The post explains three main reasons as to why Arkedo is in this situation, the “First and most obvious one” being funds. “…it has been decided to disband the team when there still was enough money to get good conditions for everyone, rather than replace permanent positions with interns and a bad atmosphere.” reads the directly translated English version of the original French posting, “As in any human matter, it is important to know when to stop, to get a clean situation.”

The second was that following the development of Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit, the studio realized that the project was “a little too big” for them. The staff at Arkedo wanted to go back to making smaller games without a major publisher behind them, although Regard did clarify that their relationship with Hell Yeah! publisher Sega was still “excellent.”

The third was that Regard and co-founder Camille Guermonprez seemed to be heading in separate directions. Guermonprez is “fully involved” in a publishing project, and Regard was looking to start his own mini-studio within the next few years. “Knowing that our long-term objectives would both drive us away from Arkedo, it didn’t make sense to take financial risks again,” Regard explained, “Within a less hostile economical context, Arkedo would probably still be here, but this context just ‘speed-uped’ the end of the studio by a couple of years.”

Regard concluded by stating, “We hug/thank you very sincerely by finishing with this: Arkedo’s members are fine, most haven’t stopped the pixels and will show you new things with their own manners. In this kind of case, we say “See ya” rather than “Farewell”, right?”

Arkedo was founded in 2006, and created Big Bang Mini on the DS, as well as the Arkedo series of games published on the Playstation Network and Xbox Live Indie Marketplace. It’s final title, Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit, released earlier this year.